Visions in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “That length of time, and your rank, and you don’t feel it would be justified—even reasonable—to inform me that you’re not only running on fumes but have a vital interview scheduled for eight hundred hours when I ordered you to report to my office at nine hundred?”

  Since he seemed to want an honest answer, she took a moment to consider the question. “No, sir.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I thought as much. You eat any of those?” He jerked his chin toward the bagels.

  “No, sir, but they’re fresh from vending. Well, as fresh as we get from vending.”

  “Eat one now.”

  “Sir?”

  “Eat, Dallas. Indulge me. You look like hell.”

  She picked one up. “Matches how I feel.”

  “I spoke with the mayor, and have a meeting with him and Chief Tibble in about thirty. Your presence was requested.”

  “At the mayor’s office, sir, or The Tower?”

  “Mayor’s office. But I will inform His Honor and the Chief that you’re unable to attend as you are in the field.”

  She didn’t speak, but something must have run over her face. Something that made him smile. “Tell me what just went through your mind. And don’t clean it up. That’s an order.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything, actually, sir. But I was mentally kissing your feet.”

  He laughed, picked up half a bagel, broke that in half, and bit in. “You’ll miss some fireworks. Shutting down a public park.”

  “I need the scene preserved while the sweepers comb it.”

  “And the mayor will counter, after all the political malarkey, that according to all reports, this perpetrator seals, and therefore you’re wasting public funds, police man-hours, and denying the citizens of New York access to public grounds while you chase the wild goose.”

  Politics weren’t her forte, but she’d already gotten there on her own. “The timing. In all probability he was still inside the park, very likely still with the victim at the dump site, when the first officers on scene arrived. He had to have her blood on him. If the timing was that close, he might not have had the time or the inclination to clean up. I know he didn’t. We found blood trails already. From kill site to dump site, and from there heading east. If I can mark his trail, his movements—”

  “Do you think because I’ve sat at a desk I don’t remember how it works in the thick? Every piece you find is another piece, simple as that. And while the mayor may not understand that, Tibble will. We’ll handle it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “I want to bring in EDD. I’ve been compiling a list, residents in a sector that rays out from the craft shop that each of the vics frequented, and a couple of gyms I need to check out that may apply. I need to juggle it down, cross-check. We find names. We find matches—residents, members, customers. We match and we eliminate and we find him. Feeney can cut through it faster, faster than I can, and then I can stay in the field instead of at a comp.”

  “Get it started.”

  She walked out with him, and parted ways to go back to her office.

  It was easy to brief Feeney. He understood her shorthand, her direction.

  “Won’t be quick,” he warned her. “But we’ll get on it as soon as you get us the data.”

  “I’m going to pressure the customer lists from the craft shop. Actually, two of them. One’s out of the parameter, but not by much. I’ll do the same at the gyms for membership lists. I’ll feed you what I get as I get it, and shoot the data we gathered last night to your office unit.”

  “Works for me.”

  “I’ve been running eye banks. Donors and receivers. I think it’s a time waster, but it has to be factored in. I’m going to give you what I’ve got on that, so you can add it to the mix.”

  “Give me all you got. You’re looking pretty peaky there, Dallas.”

  “Peaky? Jeez.”

  She cut transmission. She zipped files, lists, even her work notes to Feeney. Despite the peaky remark, she thought, he had a cop’s brain. Maybe outside of the e-work, he’d see something she’d missed.

  She grabbed the jacket she’d forgotten to put back on after her shower. Striding into the bull pen, she gave Peabody a come-ahead.

  “Let’s roll out.”

  Chapter 12

  “What does peaky mean?”

  Peabody wrinkled her brow. “I dunno. Ah, a little look-see—you know, peekaboo?”

  “No.” Eve idled at a light. “As applies to someone’s appearance. They look peaky.”

  “Beats me, but it doesn’t sound good. Want me to try to look it up?”

  “No. I asked Feeney to do the matches, looking for names that come up residentially, and in consumer and/or employee lists from the area we’ve outlined, the shops and fitness facilities within. We need to get the lists.”

  “Feeney will find matches quicker than either of us. But it’s still going to take time, considering the size of the area and the number of people we’re dealing with. Then there’s the number of matches to wade through. People tend to do at least some of their shopping and business in their own neighborhoods.”

  “Then we profile them. Unmarried males to start.”

  “I can follow the detecting dots. He likely lives alone, is between thirty and fifty.”

  “Closer to thirty,” Eve interrupted. “Close, I think, to the ages of his victims.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, just feels right. It could be a kind of trigger, couldn’t it? The age. The age he is himself, the age he sees her—the one he’s really killing. He’s grown up, he’s on equal ground now. He can punish her.” Eve jerked a shoulder. “I sound like Mira.”

  “Some. And like Mira, it sounds plausible. So, we assume he’s around thirty. We know he’s strong, has big feet. According to our civilian consultant, he also has big hands and is well over six feet in height. But we can verify through evidence, the strength and the feet.”

  While negotiating traffic, Eve glanced at her partner. “Doesn’t sound like you’re convinced by our civilian consultant.”

  “I believe her, but her visions aren’t hard fact. We work with the facts, and consider the rest.”

  “Now that’s the kind of cynicism I like to hear.”

  “She isn’t making this stuff up, and she didn’t fake her reaction to the murder weapon. Dog-sick in the bathroom. Another couple of minutes I’d have called an MT. But visions can be tricky.”

  “Can they?”

  “You know, when it comes to sarcasm, you have perfect pitch. What I’m saying is, visions often twist around reality.”

  Interested, Eve glanced over. “For instance?”

  “For instance, Celina may see the killer as unusually big—tall, large hands, and so on—because he’s powerful. Not only physically, which we can determine by the MO, but in some other way. Professionally, say, or financially. Or she sees him this way because he kills, and that’s frightening to her. The boogie man’s a big guy.”

  “Okay.” Eve nodded as she began the hunt for parking. “Keep going.”

  “We know his shoe size, and that it’s considerably larger than average. From this we can extrapolate that he is probably taller than average for a man. We know he’s strong enough—powerful enough, you could say—to carry a woman, the dead weight of that woman, nearly fifty yards, and down a short but fairly steep cliff. It’s cop work that’s giving us the most likely picture of his physical type, not visions.”

  “Does the cop work confirm her visions, or do her visions confirm the cop work?”

  “It’s both, isn’t it?” Peabody held her breath when Eve utilized the vertical and lateral modes to squeeze into an empty slice of space at a curb. Then let it out when it actually worked. “Civilian consultants are tools, but we have to know how to use them.”

  Eve eyed the traffic, waiting for a break in it where she could get out of the car without being slammed into
the pavement. “She doesn’t see his face.”

  “Could be he wears a mask. Or it could be she’s too afraid to look, that she blocks it.”

  Eve stepped onto the sidewalk. “Can she do that?”

  “If she’s strong enough, and scared enough. And she’s plenty scared. She’s not a cop, Dallas,” Peabody continued as they walked. “She’s seeing murder, and it’s not her choice the way it is ours. We don’t want to see it, we don’t pick up the badge. We sure as hell don’t work in Homicide. I chose this because I wanted to live and work in New York, always did. I wanted to be a cop, and the kind of cop who found the big answers to the big questions. Who worked for people who’d been victimized, and against the ones who’d made them victims. You?”

  “Close enough.”

  “Okay, but Celina didn’t choose. She didn’t decide, hey, I want to be a psychic, that’d be frosty. But she took what was laid on her and made her life work with it.”

  “Gotta respect that.” Eve gave a brief glance at the sidewalk sleeper with his grimy license hung around his neck who was happily posing for tourists.

  “Now, this comes along,” Peabody added. “And I think one of her biggest fears is that this new deal isn’t a one-shot. That she’s afraid murder is going to be something she sees, even after this one’s over. It’s weighty.”

  “That must’ve been some puke session.”

  Peabody snorted out a laugh. “Gold metal status. But what I’m saying is she’s trying, and it’s costing her. She may help us, but in the end, it’s our job, not hers.”

  “Agreed.” Eve stopped outside the craft shop. “Using sensitives is problematic under the best of circumstances—the best being the sensitive is cop-trained and elects to be part of the investigative team. We’ve got neither of those things in this case. But she’s linked into this, locked in. So none of us has a choice. We’ll use her, ask the questions, follow up on her visions. And you hold her head when she barfs.”

  She reached for the door, stopped. “Why New York, Peabody?”

  “Big, bad city. Hey, you want to be a crime fighter, you want to fight big, bad crime.”

  “Lots of big, bad cities out there.”

  “None of them is New York.”

  Thoughtfully, Eve studied the traffic jammed on the streets. Horns blasted in arrogant defiance of city ordinances. On the corner, a glide-cart vender shouted out colorful insults to the retreating back of a customer who’d obviously annoyed him.

  “You got that right.”

  “Well. Well. This is a very unusual request.”

  The store manager dithered in her tiny office, where the single chair was covered in what looked to Eve to be a lot of scraps stuck together in a pattern that worshipped some demanding and possibly psychotic god of color.

  She was a fortyish woman with apple cheeks and a constant smile. She continued to use it even as she stood wringing her hands together and looking confused.

  “You do keep a customer list, Ms. Chancy?”

  “Well, of course. Of course, we do. Most of our clientele repeat, and they appreciate being notified of specials and sales and events. Why, just last week we had—”

  “Ms. Chancy? We just want the list.”

  “Yes. Well, yes. Lieutenant, is it?”

  “It sure is.”

  “You see, I’ve never had a request of this nature, and I’m unsure how to proceed.”

  “Let me help you out with that. You give us the list, and we say thank you for your cooperation.”

  “But our customers. They may object. If they feel I’ve, somehow, infringed on their privacy, they may object, you see. And shop elsewhere.”

  It wasn’t difficult, in the confined space, for Peabody to nudge Eve. “We can assure you of our discretion, Ms. Chancy,” she said. “This is a very serious matter we’re investigating, and we need your help. But there’s no reason for us to reveal to any of your customers how we obtained their name.”

  “Oh, I see. I see.”

  But she continued to stand, biting her smiling lip.

  “What a beautiful quilt chair.” Peabody ran her hand over it. “Is this your work?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. I’m particularly proud of it.”

  “I can see why. It’s exceptional work.”

  “Thank you! Do you quilt?”

  “A little. I do a little of this, a little of that. I’m hoping to make more time for my handwork in the future, especially since I’m moving to a new apartment shortly. I’d like to have it reflect my interests.”

  “Well, of course,” Ms. Chancy said, enthusiastically.

  “I noticed how well supplied and how organized your shop is. I’ll certainly be back, in an unofficial capacity, as soon as I’ve settled into my new place.”

  “Wonderful! Let me give you our store information. We hold classes, you know, and have monthly clubs for any interest.” She plucked a disc out of a box covered with fabric daisies.

  “Great.”

  “You know, Lieutenant, handcrafting not only gives you the opportunity to create beautiful things that reflect your own style and personality while honoring centuries of traditions, but it is very therapeutic. I imagine anyone in your line of work needs to be able to relax and cleanse the soul.”

  “Right.” Peabody swallowed the tickle of laughter at her field promotion by the shopkeeper. “I couldn’t agree more. I have a number of friends and associates who could use the same.”

  “Really?”

  “If we could have your customer list, Ms. Chancy.” Peabody gave her a bright, toothy smile. “We’d very much appreciate your cooperation, and your support of the NYPSD.”

  “Oh. Hmm. When you put it that way.” She cleared her throat. “But you’ll be discreet?”

  Peabody kept the smile plastered on her face. “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll just make you a copy.”

  Back on the street Peabody’s smile turned smug, and there was a little bounce to her step as she walked. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Come on.” She jabbed Eve with her elbow. “Spread a little glory.”

  Eve stopped at a glide-cart. Caffeine was going to be an essential part of the day. “Couple tubes of Pepsi,” she ordered.

  “One straight, one Pepsi Fitness. Watching the weight,” she said to Eve.

  Eve shrugged, dug out credits. She took the first hit and decided there was hope left in the world. “You did a good job. Maybe a longer dance than the one with me smashing Chancy’s face into her desk, but not as messy.”

  “See, now that we’re partners, I can be the one with the voice of reason.”

  “Uh-huh. What was up with that chair?”

  “Quilt chair. They can be a real focal point—homey or amusing or striking. And it’s a clever way to recycle scraps from other projects. I didn’t like her choice of fabrics, but the workmanship was first class.”

  “Gee, the things you learn,” Eve said. “That have absolutely no use. Pick up the pace, Peabody, it’s a quicker way to ditch the weight than drinking PFs.”

  “But see, I’m drinking the PF and exercising. Which means I can have dessert at the dinner party tonight. So, what are you wearing?”

  “What am I . . . oh shit.”

  “I don’t think that’s appropriate attire for a casual dinner. We have to go,” she continued before Eve could speak. “Unless things heat up, we have to. A couple, three hours—after shift—socializing and recreating with friends isn’t going to hamper the investigation, Dallas.”

  “Jeez.” She chugged Pepsi as she strode the half a block north toward the first fitness center. “It’s weird enough, this whole cozy gathering, but now I have to do it on no sleep and with bodies piling up. My life used to be simple.”

  “Mmm.”

  “It did. Because it didn’t have all these people in it.”

  “If you need to shove somebody out, you know, to simplify? Could you give Roarke the push? See, McNab and I have this understan
ding. If Roarke’s clear, I get to take my shot at him. McNab gets one at you.”

  When Eve choked on the last swallow from the tube, Peabody gave her a helpful thump on the back. “Joking. Just sort of joking.”

  “You and McNab have a sick, sick relationship.”

  “We do.”

  Peabody beamed. “It makes us very happy.”

  Jim’s Gym was a hole in the wall down a dingy flight of stairs and through a muscular iron door. Eve assumed if a prospective member couldn’t handle the door, he was laughed back up to the sidewalk where he could slink away holding his puny biceps.

  It smelled male, but not in a flattering sense. It was the kind of odor that hit you dead center of the face, like a fist wrapped in a sweaty jock strap.

  Paint was peeling from the walls that had been tuned up to an industrial gray around the time she’d been born. There were rusty splotches in the ceiling from water damage and a grimy beige floor so soaked with sweat and blood the fumes of both rose up like fetid fog.

  She imagined the men who frequented the place breathed it in like perfume.

  The equipment was elemental—no frills. Weights and bars, a couple of heavy bags, a couple of speed bags. There were a few clunky machines that looked to have been manufactured in the last century. A single spotted mirror where a man built like a cargo shuttle was doing biceps curls.

  Another was bench-pressing what looked like your average redwood, without a spotter. She imagined the concept of spotters would be spat upon in such facilities.

  A third man pummeled one of the heavy bags like it was an adulterous ex-wife.

  All were stripped down to baggy gray sweatpants and shirts with the arms ripped off. Like a uniform, she thought. All that was missing were the words Bad Ass emblazoned over the chest.

  When Eve and Peabody stepped in, all movement stopped. Biceps Curls held his fifty-pounder suspended, Bench Press clanked his redwood in the safety, and Heavy Bag stood, pouring sweat, with his fist laid into the bag.

  In the silence, Eve heard the echoing thuds from the next room, and the encouraging: “Lead with your left, you stupid fuck!”

  She scanned the faces, then went with Heavy Bag because he was the closest. “Place got a manager?”